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| The Hobbit (1977): Bilbo Baggins carries a big pipe |
So I finally saw
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the third and final installment of Peter Jackson's hobbit trilogy this week which inspired me to go back and revisit an old childhood favorite: the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit. This was originally going to be a simple review of that animated version but instead morphed into my thoughts about what I personally think the live action films failed to accomplish that the much maligned made for television cartoon actually got right.
To wit, a simple bedtime fairy story that Jackson and company spent nearly eight hours to tell was accomplished in an economical ninety minutes in the Rankin/Bass cartoon; granted the cartoon omitted a few important threads from the book that are fleshed out somewhat in the live action film, such as Beorn the shapeshifting bear-man and the Arkenstone of the dwarves, and there were some interesting creative choices in the 1977 version that some might not have agreed with, ie: Gollum looked like a big frog, Bilbo looked like my spinster aunt Grizelda, the wood-elves looked like goblins, and the dwarves other than Thorin were all relative nonentities, but I think the Rankin/Bass 'toon still managed to capture the spirit--the tone--of the original book, creating a feeling similar to that of listening to an enchanting fireside fairy tale in a way that the live action films are less successful at, as Jackson's trilogy seems to be more interested in large scale theme park ride-like spectacle and bloodless CGI battles to small character moments, though there are a few sequences of wonderment in the live action films I really enjoyed, especially Bilbo seeing the butterflies fluttering amidst the tree tops of Mirkwood Forest in the second film and the dwarves singing the Misty Mountains song at Bag End in the first.
Though at this point it's become a cliche to compare
The Hobbit trilogy to the
Star Wars prequels I think it's actually a pretty fair comparison and a good warning to avoid any big budget prequels in the future: I dutifully went to the theater and watched both prequel trilogies, and can even say I really enjoyed parts of them immensely, but that is as far as my appreciation goes: I liked them, or parts of them. They were okay... I guess. But the original untampered with
Star Wars (pre-Special Edition) and
The Lord of the Rings trilogies? Those I LOVED--it may simply be nostalgia talking but the earlier trilogy of both series seemingly captured both lightning in a bottle and my imagination; they made me think about them even after leaving the theater, looking forward to my next viewing. In comparison, the prequel films remained in my mind only as long as I was watching them, and once the credits rolled were then jettisoned from my consciousness--like the recollection of ever having seen
Caddyshack II or
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, any feelings of goodwill instantly evaporated upon leaving the theater. Will I ever watch these films again? Possibly, but I won't feel compelled to in order to find enjoyment in their predecessors, just as I don't need to watch the sequels to
The Matrix to fully enjoy the original film as a standalone story.
My main gripe with
The Hobbit trilogy is what I consider to be its major fatal flaw: the expansion of a small story of an unassuming hobbit's adventures in the larger world of Middle-earth that could have been a tight, focused narrative told in one or maybe two parts being stretched out into a trilogy of three extremely long faux-epic action films (see the Narnia films for another example of off-tone faux-epicness infecting simple tales for children) that at the end of the day feel overly padded and yet somehow still incomplete. For whatever reasons, be they creative or financial, this smaller prelude of a tale should NEVER have been super sized to the epic proportions of the esteemed film trilogy that follows it if only for reasons of simple aesthetics: the smaller, shorter story of
The Hobbit is simply out of all seemly proportion when placed next to the truly epic
The Lord of the Rings trilogy and thus comes across as bloated and artificial, and the over reliance on CGI characters and scenery certainly don't do it any favors compared to the real life locations and prosthetics used in the earlier films.
A trilogy of butt numbingly long films worked beautifully for
The Lord of the Rings trilogy since that story was already an epic saga of good versus evil taking place during war time and those films captured pretty well the tone of the books. I'm certainly not a book purist and realize some things described on the page may need to be changed or adapted for film but in the expansion of the smaller quest tale of
The Hobbit into the larger tapestry of Jackson's previous Middle-earth films, the personal story of Bilbo Baggins--the title character and the audience's entry into this magical world--is overshadowed in favor of the larger geopolitical threads Jackson was more interested in exploring, but giving the director the benefit of the doubt perhaps that was done purposefully? And that's saying nothing of the addition of invented characters like Tauriel (who I actually thought was decent) and Alfrid (who I thought should have been cut entirely or at least saved for the extended editions) or what could have been exciting cameos for sharp eyed fans of Legolas, Radagast the Brown, or Azog the goblin, who although they are all Tolkien creations don't actually appear in the original story but who have more screen time than a character like Beorn who actually was in the book but barely included in the film. Did we really need to see back story and character motivations for the orcs and goblins to know these were the bad guys in these films?
A three film telling could probably have worked out ok if planned that way from the start, but since it happened so late in the production the end result was, for this viewer at least, a disappointing albeit not entirely unsatisfying muddle. I think if Guillermo Del Toro stayed on as director we may have gotten a better, shorter and more magical hobbit story (in one or possibly two parts) than the trilogy of missed opportunities from Jackson we ended up with...and maybe the dwarves could all actually have looked like dwarves with full on ZZ Top beards instead of the well trimmed goatees and fashionable stubble we got on the "hunky" dwarves? And there could have been less use of CGI and more use of bigatures and prosthetics? And it could have been filmed on actual good old fashioned two dimensional 24 frame per second film instead of being shot on the ugly high frame rate digital that ended up looking like a big budget 3D soap opera? I could continue but I fear I'm starting to sound like a Neo-Luddite now.
Of course at this point this is all academic since
The Hobbit trilogy is finished and out there and is what it is, which for this viewer is an overlong bloated series slavishly bound to
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, bogged down by endless CGI action sequences and full of missed opportunities to simply tell the story of
The Hobbit yet--frustratingly--highlighted by occasional flashes of brilliance. I think there was a potentially great film (or pair of films) hidden in this merely average trilogy. It will be interesting to see once some time has passed if Peter Jackson ever decides to revisit the series and release an edited down one or two film version.
If that is not in the cards I unreservedly look forward to watching the inevitable fan edits that will trim away the excess fat to reshape the narrative so that
The Hobbit is once again about a simple hobbit's adventure instead of what now appears to be the exciting action packed story of a vengeful one handed albino goblin, the forbidden love between a star-crossed dwarf prince and a she-elf warrior, and the greedy machinations of the cross dressing servant to the Master of Lake-town. Oh, and the guy from the British
Office guest stars as a hobbit too.
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The Hobbit (2012): Bilbo Baggins carries a big sword
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1/18/15 Update:
Well, that didn't take too long. Some fine fellow has edited down Peter Jackson's three
Hobbit films into one 4 hour long epic film, about half as long as the combined running time of the officially released films. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet so would not be surprised if there are some parts that are a little rough around the edges due to having to work with whatever footage was available, but I imagine this will give a good idea of what a shorter one (or two if split) film
Hobbit would have played like in an alternate universe. Kudos to the phantom editor--I look forward to watching his take on the story.
Here's the link to
The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit:
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com
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